I don't think that's what Michael H is about. But it does remind me of a recent controversy — wish I could find it easily — where the NYT used a photograph of some awful-looking people to illustrate a story about rural Americans.

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Americana is something that is handmade, and you buy it in a small store off a two-lane road that is lined with trees. As you get out of your car, the cicadas are whirring, and the heat is coming up in waves off the buckling blacktop of the parking lot.

But, I think it boils down to whether or not something represents that essence of America. Which is why all the sparkly red, white and blue in the world is never called Americana. But, weather worn, hometown prideful, often nostalgic and generally simple (in a good way!) images often are.

Americana to me means people in America who work with their hands and don't worry about getting dirty. It's also the buildings and bridges that they make and maintain. The workers and their handmade creations. Obama is not Americana.

Americana seems to be the products of a free people to be and express themselves without fear of an aristocracy going out of its way to punishing them for it. That quiet confidence was developed and shared in Fundamentalist Churches which were the only educational resource in America for 300 years. I read a comment by Paddy O yesterday that used the phrase, "like a unitarian in a pentacostal world..." to describe a person trying to be post Americana in their cultural viewpoints. Anyway,Americana culture obviously was not derived from a European belief in Emperial rule by elites, be they Royal Families or their Pope. Although we do defer sometimes to our Judges and Attorneys like the Aristocrat's role.It is our very own God given experience, and it is in no way inferior to European culture, E.g. Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, John Steinbeck.

Americana is a working class native stock thing. Which leaves out a lot of Americana. For example: a New York Jew eating bagels and lox while perusing his NY Times on a Sunday morning is not Americana although it's the Americana I grew up with. Same for a crowd of Puerto Ricans eating chuchifritos on the sidewalk in front of a bodega on a hot summer night in Spanish Harlem. Not Americana. It's unfair I tellya, unfair!

I happen to have a Norman Rockewell 2009 calendar. Here are the themes:

* Children sledding* Pastry chef reading diet book* Young adults dressing for a date* Old People playing checkers* Man fishing in the rain* Kids getting out of school* Kids playing golf* Kids swinging* Soldier telling stories* Cheerleaders and football players* Young sailor and his miss* Union Station with Xmas Travelers

I grew up in Columbus, Indiana. Approximate population: 45,000. For much of my childhood, what I saw when I looked through my sliding-glass rear door was a corn field. I've now lived and worked in Los Angeles for about 15 years. Silicon Valley for about 5 before that.

So I don't know about anyone else, but I can identify Americana very easily: if it makes me cry when I look at it, it's Americana. cf. John Mellenkamp's "Ain't That America" video. Or, for me, his "Crumbling Walls" video, but only because I was about 100 feet away when it was being shot at the Indiana University auditorium...

Is it that you can see I have an outsider's perspective and am somehow looking down on people

Yes, you do have an outsider's perspective, but I don't feel that you are looking down on people.

Sometimes it takes an outsider to actually see what we take for granted in our daily lives. I can tell that you appreciate the sights and the artistic serendipity of Americana: for example in the flood damaged building. Most local people probably just see a building that is old, painted multiple colors and flood damaged and that they see everyday. Your photo shows us something else.

I disagree with ricpic in that all ethnic groups are part of Americana. I see it locally every Sunday when the Hispanic women, who are dressed to the nines, after church go to the grocery store with their young families, socilizing with each other...ooohing and aaahing over each other's babies. I see the hopeful future of Americana in their work ethic, faith and pride in family. The face of it is different from place to place and from time to time.

Americana is the appreciation of people in the benign, everyday pursuit of the American Dream, however remote their destination -- or likelihood of arrival -- is from your own ideal.

Like porn, I know it when I see it. And it isn't just rural or small-town: America's urban, too, and we have been for generations. In big cities, neighborhoods have their own character and that contributes to Americana - as the Redneck just said, Brooklyn's a small town in a lot of ways.

When I stop coming home from the grocery store to line up with a bunch of other folks after work at Hansen's SnoBliz stand, that's Americana. Eating crawfish by the lake is Americana. Driving through crawfish paddies out in rural Louisiana is Americana, too.

I live in Appalachia and it offends my eyeballs and sensibility to travel and see the McMansion corporate cookie cutter gated community neighborhoods in wealthy suburbs.

Some of the buildings in the pix were built by the people who lived in them, with superb materials and craftsmanship, that will long outlast the fashionable McMansions.

The people here are resourceful and conserve what they have. Long term subsistence living and sometime poverty and Depression era habits. Once you know the culture and how it lives and thrives, including its positive aspects, you see things with different eyes.

So I'm an outsider, but I came here with a sense of gratitude for being here, which grows ever deeper over time. I'm not trying to save anyone, like the typical outsiders who come here. I'm happy to be in a beautiful place with really kind-hearted people who never met a stranger and who would give you their last provisions from the pantry even if that left them short. As I face the possibility of a fourth cancer, (how absurd!), there's people coming out of the woodwork to offer help, prayers, food, anything I need. I don't live near my family, but my people here are gathering round like an Amish barn-raising to get me through.

I used to be embarrassed about my sentimentality for Americana, but I'm unabashed about it. I have shed the self consciousness, a remnant of my proper English mother who put on airs, like Hyacinth Bucket. My airs done floated away.

For some great contemporary Americana music, I'd like to highly recommend Carla Gover (individual project, more traditional) and the duo she later formed with her hubby, Zoe Speaks. If you ever get a chance to see them live, you must go.

Amazing talent. God sprinkled an extra measure of music talent in these parts.